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"I work at . . . " This small talk preamble is rapidly becoming out of date. For many, it has long been replaced by "I work for . . ." or even "I am a . . ."

"At" just isn't really part of the conversation anymore. About a third of the global labour force work wherever they are -not just in a particular building, or several.

There is an unprecedented shift going on -one that was only a nascent promise during the late-1990s Internet boom -and is finally coming to fruition thanks to the pervasive adoption of mobile technology.

More than one billion people qualified as remote workers by the end of last year and, according to the International Data Corp.'s Worldwide Mobile Worker Population 2009-2013 Forecast, the global workforce will be more than one-third (35 per cent) mobile by 2013. The mushrooming adoption of smartphones, tablets and other mobile computing devices for business uses has blurred the line between what does and does not qualify as what some call "telework."

And as mobile technology quickly evolves, it is also broadening the scope of jobs capable of being accomplished via telework. Typically, people feel their jobs are too complicated and relationship-oriented to be done remotely, but some of the most highly skilled, hands-on work is being at least partly done with a BlackBerry or an iPad.

According to Bob Fortier, president of the Canadian Telework Association, there were about 100,000 teleworkers in Canada in the late 1980s. He estimates the number today at somewhere between 1.5 million and two million individuals working remotely.

Businesses can be run from anywhere, recruit from anywhere and perhaps most important, can serve a customer base unrestricted by geographic limitations.

"My clients are pretty much distributed across the country," says Tom Kelly, owner of T-Edward Inc., which services companies largely rooted in the areas of software, mobility and computing.

"I try to do everything virtually so where they're located is not a big issue." At any given moment Kelly, who lives in Minnesota, serves as chief financial officer, chief operating officer, or both, for as many as four different companies based in several different states.

He uses cloud-based collaboration and communication software such as Google Docs and Skype to co-ordinate with his employees in Texas and Colorado.

"Most of (my clients) are definitely focused on technology . . . but I have several companies that are focused on health care," Kelly says. "I even have one company called SeedLogic (for which) we use technology to feed pigs and poultry on farms."

With more than 90 per cent of its internal meetings now being conducted using virtual meeting software, Cisco Systems is a vanguard of the mobileworkforce movement.

Technically, 500 people work out of the network equipment maker's downtown Toronto office, but there are only 200 desks.

"Everyone else works remotely and just comes in occasionally for meetings," said Jeff Seifert, chief technology officer for Cisco's Canadian division.

His steadfast conviction is well-founded from a business-planning perspective. Worldwide, Cisco says it has saved more than $890 million just by avoiding general travel expenses through its various telework initiatives.

"Businesses are really starting to understand that this is not a perk, this is a true business strategy," said Rose Stanley, resident telecommuting expert with global human resources advocacy group WorldAtWork. "Our studies have shown a direct correlation between higher flexibility of working environment to lower turnover."

Based on data compiled from nearly 25,000 employees of International Business Machines Corp. spread across 75 countries, researchers at Utah's Brigham Young University found regular office workers experienced a conflict between work and home life after 38 hours of work, while those with the option of working remotely did not hit that threshold until after 57 hours.

That is nearly two additional days of work with the same amount of stress.

Working on extra hours does have its downside.

"You're never really with your kids, you're never really at work, you're never really anywhere," says Sandi Mann, senior lecturer in occupational psychology at the University of Central Lancashire in the U.K.

But the more practical barrier keeping businesses from readily adopting more liberal mobile policies is information security rather than human resources management.

Employers are simply uncomfortable with the idea of staff accessing sensitive company data from their personal devices, argues Kurt Roemer, the chief security strategist for Citrix.

"IT departments once had the luxury of owning the devices, owning the network, owning the data centre, basically just owning everything end to end," he said. "They designed security architectures based around that concept, but that has all changed."

Not long ago, a large enterprise IT mobility policy started and stopped at the BlackBerry. But as other mobile devices based on technology from Apple Inc., Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. find their way into the hands of executives in every industry, IT departments have been forced to adapt.

"When you give employees the ability to pick and choose their own devices, you're giving them quite a bit of free rein to do what they need in order to get their job done, but you're also potentially putting company and organizational data at risk," Roemer said.

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Telework: The new labour force norm

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